Battlegrounds is super fun, energy cost kills it for me.

I could see myself playing a ton of battlegrounds, really fun mode. But there’s just no way I can burn that much energy over and over.

And if I couldn’t play it quite a bit, there’s no point in playing it sporadically, at least for me.

Kabam, you can monetize the mode simply bc it breathes new life into the game. I want to rank up like 30+ more champs for the mode. People are going to want to play more and get more champs. Don’t put an energy cost gate to bar entry.

If you want to limit prizes earned, just put something on the mode like from incursions, where you can keep playing, but any matches after a certain threshold don’t earn daily/weekly/whatever rewards.

I just can’t see myself spending a ton of energy to play this mode, even though it’s addicting.

Comments

Aegon87

15 is too much. 5 is ok

GinjabredMonsta

Yeah, I'm not so big on the energy cost as well. I'm glad they reduced it from 30 to 15 but I still think final version will need it reduced too

SkyLord7000

Yeah, I'm not so big on the energy cost as well. I'm glad they reduced it from 30 to 15 but I still think final version will need it reduced too

Unless they keep handing out refills like candy

DNA3000

15 is too much. 5 is ok

5 is probably a bit low. My suggestion: reduce energy costs to 10, but give players a small energy refill for each win up to some cap. Assuming a 50/50 win rate on average, the average costs would then be about 7ish energy per match, up to some limit. Then the energy costs would rise to 10 per match past the last milestone.

We subsidize energy costs for everyone up to some limit for the casual to moderate players, and then the hard core grinders pay more. And we give players a small reward for skill by reducing the energy costs of wins.

Even without the energy rebate, 10 energy means not only seven consecutive matches at the energy cap, even lower level UC players with, say, 50 energy limits could still do five matches in a row, which is about an hour of play on a full energy bar. Factoring in a 50/50 rebate and natural energy recharge, an Uncollected player who wins about half the time could do eight matches in a row over about an hour and a half on a full energy bar of 50 energy. A player at the energy cap could do about two hours of matches continuously on a full bar of energy at these costs.

That seems reasonable to me.

BitterSteel

@DNA3000 whats your thoughts on energy cost alongside champion stamina? I feel like that may be a bit of a game killer.

I know I won’t have roster depth to keep a decent deck going past at most 1 or max 2 lots of 30 champs. That’s how many my 5/65s plus would manage.

Unless champion stamina is quite high, or replenishes quite fast I just can’t see it being a good addition to the mode. But I’m interested in your thoughts behind it, whether there’s some economical reason to have it that isn’t obvious at first.

DNA3000

@DNA3000 whats your thoughts on energy cost alongside champion stamina? I feel like that may be a bit of a game killer.

I know I won’t have roster depth to keep a decent deck going past at most 1 or max 2 lots of 30 champs. That’s how many my 5/65s plus would manage.

Unless champion stamina is quite high, or replenishes quite fast I just can’t see it being a good addition to the mode. But I’m interested in your thoughts behind it, whether there’s some economical reason to have it that isn’t obvious at first.

This is just my opinion, but I believe the energy costs and the champion recharge are serving two completely different purposes. The energy costs are primarily a throttle, and the recharge costs are primarily a monetization gate.

Let's get the ugly part out of the way first: this is an F2P game supported by microtransactions. Every major part of the game has to pull its weight in supporting its existence. So there has to be a way to monetize battlegrounds. That's a given.

The game has a couple of monetization avenues, but the big two are champion acquisition and consumables. Having a large and ranked up roster conveys advantages - in war, in AQ, even in arena. Those advantages are part of what makes champions valuable, and makes pursuing champions worth the chase. Battlegrounds clearly offers advantages to larger and stronger rosters. But that large and strong roster advantage has a problem at the very top of the game: everyone has the same large and strong roster. Advantages are slim.

Champion recharge provides an additional consumable spender advantage. No matter how large your roster, it eventually goes on cooldown. Casual players are highly unlikely to run into major cooldown issues, but top competitors will lose their roster advantage if they don't mitigate that cooldown to keep their best champs alive. This is something that can be monetized.

The function of champ cooldown, then is to separate the more hardcore grinders from the more casual players, and then to monetize the cooldown gate for the subset of hardcore grinders willing to pay to maintain their roster advantage across a larger number of matches. Everyone else can basically ignore that gate to a large extent, or work around it.

The energy costs are completely orthogonal to the champion cooldowns. It is there to throttle the game mode overall. It might seem nonsensical to throttle game play: why wouldn't you want players playing as much as possible? But the game uses energy elsewhere: if the devs wanted people to play constantly, why is there energy at all?

The function of energy in general is to spread out player activity, so they cannot "scratch that itch" all at once. They have to come back for more, and conversely they can't burn themselves out too quickly. The devs probably have the same concern with battlegrounds that they have with the game as a whole: if players play it as much as they want, what happens when they have played it as much as they want. What then? Energy is the answer to that question for quest content, so they are simply leveraging an existing solution to a new version of the same problem.

So energy costs should be (if my perspective is identical to the devs perspective) balanced around allowing players to play enough to keep them interested, but not so much that they get satiated. Champion cooldowns should be balanced so that when players play at a moderate level consistent with average play, the cooldowns are minimally disruptive, but players pursuing higher returns from the game mode (like, say, arena grinders) have to pay for that maximal reward experience at the highest levels of competition. As we don't know what the reward structure is going to be yet, there's no way to know what that level should be. But whatever it is, it will be linked to energy costs in the sense both will restrain play to some extent, but their balance rationale will ultimately be completely different.

Short version: the devs need players to be able to play enough to be worth playing, but we also need them to be left wanting more, because we have to convince 5% of the players who want more that it is worth paying to get more. Champion cooldowns are the top tier consumable version of this, energy costs are the weaker game play throttle version of this.

This is how I think a game developer would explain it (if they didn't think they'd get hit by tomatoes while doing so).

Mario33

i think we should discuss it after the real ranking rewards are certain. Now its too much yes but maybe it’ll worth 15 energies later.

Wicket329

i think we should discuss it after the real ranking rewards are certain. Now its too much yes but maybe it’ll worth 15 energies later.

This has me thinking of an interesting way of framing it. How much is that energy worth? Four Battlegrounds matches is (roughly) the equivalent of one 3 energy per step quest. How do you scale rewards with that comparison in mind?

Obviously questing content is finite whereas Battlegrounds grinding is not. If you had infinite energy to spend, you would eventually complete all the quest content in the game. But you would always have more Battlegrounds to play. Will there be small rewards per match plus the seasonal rewards like AW is, or will it be something else? Lots of different moving pieces at play. I have no answers here, but it’s all interesting to think about.

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BitterSteel

who's kidding anyone? this game mode, as evidence shows over 2 days from global rankings, was targeted specifically to those with the best chance to field a 30 6r3 champ deck. it certainly will not appeal to users who have yet to collect 30 4 star champs.
if there were ever a time to put something behind a paywall, this is it.

tl/dr: substitute Energies with Units. you know they'll pay.

show me the units, kabam!

I only have 15-20 champions at R3 or above in my deck, the rest 5/65 and 6* R2.

Wicket329

who's kidding anyone? this game mode, as evidence shows over 2 days from global rankings, was targeted specifically to those with the best chance to field a 30 6r3 champ deck. it certainly will not appeal to users who have yet to collect 30 4 star champs.
if there were ever a time to put something behind a paywall, this is it.

tl/dr: substitute Energies with Units. you know they'll pay.

show me the units, kabam!
I only have 15-20 champions at R3 or above in my deck, the rest 5/65 and 6* R2.

Adding this photo to drive @BitterSteel’s point home. People forget that the gap between a 5/65 5* and a r3 6* really isn’t so huge. A good champ for the mode in the right hands will shine even at the lower rarity.

Giuliameij

who's kidding anyone? this game mode, as evidence shows over 2 days from global rankings, was targeted specifically to those with the best chance to field a 30 6r3 champ deck. it certainly will not appeal to users who have yet to collect 30 4 star champs.
if there were ever a time to put something behind a paywall, this is it.

tl/dr: substitute Energies with Units. you know they'll pay.

show me the units, kabam!

Eventually this will mean that anyone with a 4 star roster will get rated against other people with 4 star rosters. You can get a higher rank if you are either really good, or collect a better roster.
The rank you can get would still give rewards based on your current roster and/or skill level.
It could give you an extra way of expanding and progressing.

It is al over the place right now. Because we have no real starting point. I believe with the real release, after about a week tops. You will start facing people your own progression level.
Has nothing to do with a paywall.

I do agree the energy cost is too high. The idea behind the mode really speaks to me. It might even make me start ranking certain defenders, change masteries. And take me out of arena if it would also turn out to be rewarding when looking at gold (and maybe some units, althou I doubt that).

Skiddy212

I think an energy cost of 10 would be perfect.

Potentially increasing the opportunities for free full energy refills would also be a nice way to ensure we have energy to do all content.

TheLegend27

I think there should be a battlegrounds energy meter (similar to how AQ/AW have their own energy meters). Stick with the 6 max (1 match costs 1 battleground energy) and the battlegrounds store can have purchasable battlegrounds energy refills.

This would also allow people to do other content and move on to battlegrounds when their normal energy is depleted.

BitterSteel

who's kidding anyone? this game mode, as evidence shows over 2 days from global rankings, was targeted specifically to those with the best chance to field a 30 6r3 champ deck. it certainly will not appeal to users who have yet to collect 30 4 star champs.
if there were ever a time to put something behind a paywall, this is it.

tl/dr: substitute Energies with Units. you know they'll pay.

show me the units, kabam!
I only have 15-20 champions at R3 or above in my deck, the rest 5/65 and 6* R2.

Adding this photo to drive @BitterSteel’s point home. People forget that the gap between a 5/65 5* and a r3 6* really isn’t so huge. A good champ for the mode in the right hands will shine even at the lower rarity.

Appreciate that @Wicket329 , my 6* rank 2s and rank 5s have been all kinds of helpful. And another point is that even though my R3s obviously help more, there are lots of scenarios I’d rather a 5/65 CGR than a 6* R3 Guardian. CGr is likely to finish the fight quicker.

Battlegrounds is more about picking the right match up, and an extra 20% health and attack isn’t always going to be the difference, even if it does help. Sometimes a better match up with a 5/65 will be the answer.

Fit_Fun9329

Didn’t play a single match - need energy elsewhere

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Wicket329

One problem I have is that if I have 7 energy left and want to add an energy refill of 70, I lose the 7 energy.
I think it needs to be changed so if you add the 70, you temporarily go over…to 77 for example.
Then I can just do a bunch of fights.

I actually think this should be for all game modes. There are long paths in Variants, and I just want to apply my energy and run the path while I’m boosted.

Now to some of you, 7 energy might mean nothing. But I manage my resources. And this game pushes that constantly.

I always use the little refills until I get to a proper 0 on energy. Math’s a little different with 15 per energy expenditures rather than leading with the big one.

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Colinwhitworth69

I could see myself playing a ton of battlegrounds, really fun mode. But there’s just no way I can burn that much energy over and over.

And if I couldn’t play it quite a bit, there’s no point in playing it sporadically, at least for me.

Kabam, you can monetize the mode simply bc it breathes new life into the game. I want to rank up like 30+ more champs for the mode. People are going to want to play more and get more champs. Don’t put an energy cost gate to bar entry.

If you want to limit prizes earned, just put something on the mode like from incursions, where you can keep playing, but any matches after a certain threshold don’t earn daily/weekly/whatever rewards.

I just can’t see myself spending a ton of energy to play this mode, even though it’s addicting.

I suspect when they start limiting the use of champs to three fights in a day or whatever that people won't be playing all day, and the energy cost won't be as important. Same goes for the rewards structure -- will you be able to fight for rewards as much as you want, or will it be limited by cycle like Incursions?

DrDrill

my suggestion is to do a specific energy system for it,
start at 5, cap at 8, cooldown is 1h - unit recharge cost 60 units.
this way, people can do content and do BGs as well, and for people how want's to grind, gonna provide cash for Kabam, maybe do shop offers for item that refresh it, like 10 BG energy refills for 30$.
the numbers are my suggestions, but you can put it as you like and price it differently, but this way, more people gonna be interested to play this rather than worrying if you play this mode, you won't be able to finish EQ or Main story..etc